The Lesson Of Hormel: Strike Is A Lamb Ready For Slaughter

February 09, 1986|By James Warren, who writes about labor matters for The Tribune.

AUSTIN, MINN. — The ominous presence of green-fatigued National Guardsman patrolling the George A. Hormel & Co. meatpacking plant constitutes both a reminder and painful lesson for organized labor.

The lesson is that a strike is a tool of naked, economic warfare but a tool that increasingly appears to be losing its steam nationwide.

Since Aug. 17, Local P-9 of the United Food & Commercial Workers has been on strike against Hormel in a highly-publicized dispute that has divided a small company town, led to an open rift between a local convinced it was in the vanguard of a national movement and the union`s leaders and left a controversial union consultant in a precarious, even embarrassing position.

Yet the dispute`s very visibility has heightened the stakes and raised the possibility of a legacy to be grasped by many unions and employers alike. ``Austin makes clear that the strike has lost a lot of its economic impact for unions,`` said Thomas Kochan, an industrial relations expert at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ``At best, it`s a defensive tactic and one that has to be chosen carefully.``

Paul Goldberg, director of Minnesota`s Bureau of Mediation Services and one of several third parties who tried unsuccessfuly to fashion an accord, said, ``People nationwide probably won`t realize the underlying circumstances of this particular situation, but merely be left with a general, negative perception of strikes, the labor movement and collective bargaining.``

And a top AFL-CIO official, who said he ``agonizes over Austin,``

declared, ``Generally speaking, local strikes are dead.``

While union leaders here vigorously deny the suggestion the battle is fizzling, or even lost, the tide appears to have turned in the company`s favor --at least, by traditional analysis.

On Jan. 13, the company reopened its flagship $120 million plant, the nation`s most modern meatpacking facility. It simultaneously ``invited`` the 1,400 striking P-9 members to return, while giving out applications to what turned out to be a flood of eager job seekers.

By Monday, the company will have hired more than 900 of the 1,025 hourly workers needed to operate the plant as it intends to discontinue and streamline some operations in Austin. Only about 400 workers are former strikers and because of the lengthy training, especially for skilled slaughtering jobs, the plant is not expected to return to full production for several months.

At the same time, Hormel moved swiftly when P-9 members picketed the company`s other plants. For honoring picket lines which the company maintained violated the terms of existing union contracts, Hormel fired 480 workers at the Ottumwa, Iowa plant, 65 at the Fremont, Neb. plant and 2 in Dallas. It`s in the process of replacing them, too.

Barring unexpected settlements, there is the possibility that perhaps 1,500 Hormel workers in four states, including Austin Mayor Tom Kough, will be left jobless as Local P-9`s campaign to win a new contract here continues to be unfulfilled.

The Austin strike is a cause celebre within organized labor. But the bitterness and controversy has obscured a key reality: namely a deep and longstanding mistrust of a paternalistic company.

That mistrust, say outsiders intimate with Hormel, had its roots on the shop floor. Workers were disenchanted with what they deemed haughty, arbitrary supervisors, as well as a belief that plant safety was poor and production lines moved too fast.

A sense of inequity partly explained why they spurned Hormel`s request for major wage concessions in 1984. Although Hormel was profitable, meatpacking was undergoing revolutionary change marked by growing nonunion competition, bankruptcies, rampant cost-cutting and automation.

Like most union meatpackers, Hormel was paying a $10.69 base hourly wage. The company sought to unilaterally impose a $8.25 rate at its plantsbut failed. It then tried to renegotiate all the locals` contracts, setting a $9 rate that would rise to $10 in 1985.

With the approval, and even prodding, of the national leaders of the 1.3 million UFCW, all Hormel locals except Austin agreed. The national leaders were furious with Austin, believing it was picking the wrong fight, especially when the union`s real threat was not from higher wage unionized employers but nonunion operators paying as low as $5 an hour.

Hormel imposed an $8.25 wage in Austin, although grievance arbitration brought it back to $9.25. All along, the local rebelled, seeing itself at the head of a national, anti-concessions surge and being undermined by its

``brothers and sisters`` at UFCW headquarters in Washington.

The tempest grew with the hiring of labor consultant Ray Rogers, 41, who gained national attention by helping devise a ``corporate campaign`` during the epic, ultimately successful struggle with anti-union textile giant, J.P. Stevens and who has again been publicly criticized in the Austin strike by much of the AFL-CIO establishment as a headline-grabbing outsider.